


splendor sine occasu

by seraf



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Character Study, Gen, Spiral!Mike, Vertigo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23367979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: ( radiance without diminishment. )mike crew throws himself to the vast, and the spiral follows. there is not a good word for what he is, but he is of-the-vast and of-the-spiral, and at least he is no longer being chased.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 63





	splendor sine occasu

‘ _i am yours_ , ‘ he screams, voice run ragged with latin and desperation and trying to speak above the storm, and he _jumps._

and something catches him. 

and something _swallows_ him. 

the jagged lightning shapes were a broken-off part of the twisting deceit, but they more rightly belonged to the sky. mike crew had been chased by those fractals, but more rightly was the falling titan’s. 

and so they crash, when he jumps, like a wave against the sand. and he is caught in the middle, of the endless air and the spiralling, electric fractals, both struggling to consume him whole, to make him _theirs._

and suddenly, it is no longer a _clash,_ but a flow, the lightning-creature pulled forwards - mike is still clutching _ex altiora_ to his chest like a protective barrier, and for a moment, he feels elated, like he is giving himself to the vast and the fractals will be _gone -_

and then electricity sets his body alight. 

he had bound himself to the vast. to _ex altiora._ and the twisting deceit as well, to the same pages, to his soul, anchored to that endless sky. he comes out of it, days, weeks, later, opening a window of a sky-rise building and stumbling in, vomiting on the carpet and ignoring the impossible colors there. 

his body is alight with dizziness. is it from the fractals, from the spinning? or is it from vertigo? either way, it consumes him with nausea. he _stinks_ of ozone, and the smell of a storm rolling in, but there is something else there, too. wind, or petrichor, or mountain air - altitude. freedom. 

it is … something. he is no longer being chased. 

his hair falls in windswept spirals around his face, and his eyes are windows in their own right, now, to an endless, impossible sky, all the wrong kinds of colors - stars not as they should be, blue turned a little too technicolor. his voice is overlaid with a gentle buzz, like electricity, like the way bulbs used to crackle every time he walked into a room. 

( he is much better at _windows,_ he finds, than doors. the higher the better. ) 

he leaves fractals in his wake, those same spiralling lichtenberg patterns, as though everything he touches is kissed by lightning. just like they had when he had traced his skin as a child, hypnotized by those patterns, they extend far past his skin. the ghost of electricity, rolling away from his body. 

grant walker climbs an endless ladder, up towards a window he can never reach. herbert knox is haunted by a figure he sees in the corners of his vision, so impossibly huge it makes him question his mind, his vision, his sanity. there are windows in places there shouldn’t be, looking out over impossible drops from the ground floor, the ground far enough away that the mind tries to _lie,_ to convince you it is anything but there. 

twisting, falling, windows becoming doors, vertigo confused for dizziness, impossible colors and fractals becoming _infinite._ mike crew is an in-between, and he is making peace with it. 

**Author's Note:**

> ull NEVER GUESS what my hyperfixation of late has been. anyway i love . . . . mike


End file.
